Re: RAT Sarah Kane

[brad rothbart <scrdchao@nni.com>]

>NashGay@aol.com wrote:
>
>> Okay, Goddamnit!  Am I an idiot or is Anonymous?
>> -r
>
>> << "The Barber shaves all and only those who do not shave themselves.
>>  If he does, he doesn't. If he doesn't, he does."
>>
<snip>
>
>The Barber Shaves All
>AND
>The Barber Shaves only those who do not shave themselves:
>
>THEREFORE
>
>IF the Barber DOES Shave ALL (Including himself) He DOESN'T Shave only
>those who do not shave themselves.
>
>and
>
>IF the Barber DOESN'T shave ALL (by excluding himself) He DOES shave
>only those who do not shave themselves
>
>It's the 'himself' part that makes it a recursive paradox.
>

 Close -  it's actually the "all and only " clause that make it
paradoxical, and the existence of the self that makes it recursive.

 By shaving himself- he is not shaving  ONLY those who  do not shave
themselves, By not shaving himself, he is not shaving ALL of those who  do
not shave themselves.

 This paradox was used mainly by Wittgenstein,  but also shows up in
Heidegger' s proof of his hypercube as well as Heisenberg's uncertainty
principle...

The form is called an antinomie.


I, however, knew none of this.. I fouind this formulation in David  Foster
Wallace's  Broom of The System ( a great, fun book, by the way..)  and was
entranced by it. DFW   had a character in the book attribute it to
Anonymous, and not wanted to take a chance I followed that attribution....

It was only only after much Internet research that I found the
aforementioned historical antecedents.


Blaming it all on Post-Structuralism,

brad







"The Barber shaves all and only those who do not shave themselves.
If he does, he doesn't. If he doesn't, he does."

-Anonymous

ICQ#4630292